Black & White
 

i was wondering if it makes sense to use the mini35 on my next short which will be in black and white.

Absolutely! In fact, the short depth of field will help with separation, which is one of the trickier things to deal with in black and white; you lose the color factor, leaving shades of grey behind. With standard DV, two different objects of the same shade (luminance, really) that are 20 feet apart can blend into each other; with the Mini35, selective focus would help to differentiate them.

However, good lighting and wardrobe/set tests are still very important.

Sure. The mini35 doesn't really affect color anyway. I mean, you do pick up a tiny bit of the color response of various lenses, but nothing significant. So the mini35's advantages aren't tied to color, it should perform just as well for a B&W production.

Barry, what is your experience on projecting the mini35 image (either digital projection or 35mm blow-up)? Someone mentioned that you ran some tests? Did the image hold up or was it soft? What camera did you use, the DVX or XL2? Thanks!

Projected on both SD to 10' screen, and from 35mm. You can view the 35mm yourself, it's on DVFilm.com's demo reel, and they make it available for free for anyone who wants to arrange to screen it (you send a $300 deposit to make sure they get it back, they send you the print, you screen it, you send it back and they send the deposit back).

Or, if you're in the L.A. area they can arrange a free screening for you.

I used the DVX.

How'd it look? Overall, it was just on the wrong side of too soft. It was close to "good enough", but just a little too soft. It held up a lot better than I was expecting, I'll tell you that. And it depends on where in the theater you're sitting: if you're in the front row it would be completely unacceptable, and if you're in the back row it looks fantastic -- I mean, really, really good.

I thought the un-mini35 footage looked about twice as sharp as "28 Days Later", and in my mind it was just on the right side of "acceptable". The mini35 footage looked more around the sharpness level of "28 Days Later" -- but with the shallower DOF, etc. I thought it was just below the level of "acceptable". But hey, that's all subjective...

On the demo reel we have the same shots with/without the mini35 so you can see what kind of resolution hit it takes. It really wasn't that much different -- I really expected it to look a LOT softer, because a) the non-mini35 was shot with the anamorphic adapter, and the mini35 stuff was shot in "letterbox", and b) the footage is noticeably softer when viewed on the computer screen, so I expected it to be a lot softer on the big screen. I guess DVFilm's up-rezzing process is really good though, because the differences were a lot less than I was expecting.